"What Would the Flying Spaghetti Monster Do?" A parody of "What Would Jesus Do?" (WWJD?)

"I want to believe", a take off the poster that Mulder had in his office in the X-Files

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is a deity invented by Bobby Henderson as a parody of Intelligent design. The FSM first came to public notice when Henderson wrote a letter to the Kansas School Board, which was considering adding Intelligent Design to the curriculum; Henderson argued for including the FSM as well, echoing many of the arguments used by Intelligent Design advocates.

Although the FSM is absurd, and there is no evidence for its existence, the same can be said of God and of the designer in Intelligent Design. Thus, Henderson argues, if a school district chooses to teach ID in the classroom, it ought to teach the Flying Spaghetti Monster as well, so that students can hear all viewpoints and make up their own minds.

The Deity

The Flying Spagheti Monster is depicted as a knot of Spaghetti, flanked by two meatballs, with eyes on stalks. Such a depiction is, of course, a complete guess, as the FSM is invisible to all known forms scientific detection.

The FSM is said to be capable of altering measurement results to make the world appear older or otherwise different from the way it really is. Thus, a scientist may carbon-date an artifact as being 10,000 years old, but the measurement has been altered by the FSM. This illustrates the problem of trying to do science without methodological naturalism.

In the Beginning, the FSM created a hill, some trees, and a midget in full pirate regalia. His Meatballiness is quite fond of Pirate Regalia, and gets mad when people do not dress as pirates. You will be interested to know that the number and intensity of hurricanes, wars, famine, and other natural disasters has increased inversly to the number of pirates since the beginning of the 19th century.

Followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are known as "Pastafarians." They are also encouraged to be pirates, hence the alternate logo of a "dead pirate fish" to counter the xian fish. It is explained in Pastafarian teachings that as pirates decreased in number over the centuries, global warming has increased. This inverse Correlation has led the followers to become pirates to counter Earths' warming and other ill effects on the planet.

In 2006, the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster released the holy word of His Noodly Greatness, The Gospel Of The Flying Spagetti Monster.